“O” is for “Ocean” - The Atlantic
By Phyllis Knox
This blog is part of a very special series created and written by Phyllis Knox, “Alphabetic Musings”, whereby she chooses a word starting with a particular letter from the alphabet and injects it with her storytelling magic.
If you look up “ocean” on Wikipedia, you’ll receive this phrase first as a definition: “The ocean (also known as the sea or the world ocean) is a body of salt water that covers approximately 70,8% of the Earth and contains 97% of Earth’s water.” This huge body of water, with an average depth of 3,688 meters, has been divided into five named oceans; the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and the most recently named, the Southern, or Antarctic Ocean. The ocean is, simply but importantly, essential for life.
My love of the oceans of the world has no bounds, but the Atlantic Ocean is the one which holds the deepest feelings for me. I see it as OUR Canadian Ocean. Its boundaries are apparently limitless; Canada’s coastline is the longest in the world – by a longshot – in a list of 155 countries that are not land-locked.
The British see Canada as the country “across the pond,” meaning on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Therefore, the word ‘pond’ is an understatement to refer to the North Atlantic between North America and Europe. It is the path that my ancestors took so very many decades ago, some leaving famine and war-torn Ireland, others departing from Italy to cross the Atlantic and land on what would become our wonderful country, Canada…. from ‘Sea to Shining Sea’. The First Nations, as they are called today, were hunter-gatherers who came to North America from the North Asia Mammoth steppe via the Bering land bridge and had been here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. Our history books credit Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) with the ‘discovery’ of what was to be called the New World, but today, we now know that Leif Eriksson and his Viking ships sailed the Atlantic and set foot on this land of ours (they called it Vineland, but it was today’s Newfoundland) some five hundred years before Columbus. What we can say for sure, is that the open waterway between Europe and the land beyond to the west of it was and still is the most important conduit in the world.
As I mentioned in the initial blog, Let me Introduce Myself, I was born in Nova Scotia. I am somehow connected to the salt water, the waves and to the tides of this mystical land. The folk song, Farewell to Nova Scotia (catalogued in the Roud Folk Song Index as no. 384), resonates with me. Both the tune and the lyrics are public domain, but according to Wikipedia, it was “derived from The Soldier’s Adieu, by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill.” Later, it “was changed to reflect a soldier’s sorrow at leaving the hills behind as he heads out to sea (1791).” The song has been interpreted by countless musicians and singers; some of the best by our own Gordon Lightfoot (R.I.P.), and The Irish Rovers, to name but a few. You can hear versions of it here and here. Below, are the lyrics for 2 of the 4 stanzas.
Chorus
Farewell to (Fare thee well) Nova Scotia, the sea-bound coast,
let your mountains dark and dreary be.
For when I am far away on the briny ocean tossed,
Will you ever heave a sigh or a wish for me?
Verse 1
The sun was setting in the west,
The birds were singing on every tree.
All nature seemed inclined to rest
But still there was no rest for me.
Chorus
Verse 2
I grieve to leave my native land,
I grieve to leave my comrades all,
and my aging parents whom I’ve always loved so dear.
and the bonnie, bonnie lass that I do adore.
We all come from somewhere; many of us have roots somewhere else. Unselfishly, many of our ancestors came across The North Atlantic in search of a better life for their families. In doing so, they left behind a world that they knew they could never return to. They had to learn how to survive across the sea. Nothing was the same, but somehow, they not only pulled through but they flourished! Some got off the mighty ships in Quebec City from France (1608), others crossed the Pond from Ireland and England in the late 17th Century and still others arrived in the first two decades of the 19th Century when, for example, 35,000 passengers got off the ships and walked onto the docks in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Many others landed here in Canada on this wonderful continent, hundreds of years later. What all these people have in common is their incredible strength, their enduring toughness, and their unbelievable ‘brawn’.
While my life story, beginning as a child, took me from Halifax on a Canadian Pacific train, over the railway tracks of New Brunswick and into the promise of the province of Quebec to disembark in Three Rivers, it is nonetheless a story of change and adaptation. In my case, it is a story of a family that was looking for a place to lay down roots, a place to find the stability we all crave. Some members of my immediate family have moved back to the Maritime lifestyle of their childhood, while others are still here in Three Rivers along the formidable St. Maurice and the mighty St. Lawrence Rivers which run downstream to the most beautiful of all oceans, the North Atlantic.
P.S. I have visited Halifax many times throughout these last six decades and each and every time, I feel a kinship with the people and an attraction to the geography of the land. Most of all, I feel a strong link to the salty waters which I see so clearly even through the foggy mists; I feel the winds to the core of my very being and I hear the crashing of the waves before me even when I am hundreds of miles away from its shores! The North Atlantic is more than ‘my home away from home’, it is my very soul!
-Phyllis
